Acharya s. Bull

8/9/2019 Acharya s. Bull

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Here is a summation of problems with and signals from Acharya S' The Christ,Conspiracy:

It is published by "Adventures Unlimited," which also puts out material on time travel

and Atlantis.

I would recommend to the reader Glenn Miller's work in progress oncopycat myths as

well as ourseries on pagan comparisons.

Despite claims to do so, the author doesn't bother with much showing a cause-and-effect

or logical relationship between religion and disaster. One may ask, what about the fact

that atheistic communism has caused more deaths than all religious crusades of any sortcombined? Her answer: "..(F)ew realize or acknowledge that the originators of

Communism were Jewish (Marx, Lenin, Hess, Trotsky) and that the most overtly violent

leaders were Roman Catholic (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) or Eastern Orthodox Christian

(Stalin), despotic and intolerant ideologies that breed fascistic dictators. In other words,these movements were not 'atheistic,' as religionists maintain." (2)

That none of the named heroes of Communism/CatholicismpracticedtheirJudaism/Catholicism is not mentioned and/or proved (much less is it shown that Judaism

provided the support for their ideologies and actions); that Stalin was merely a seminary

student, hardly a professing believer in Orthodox religion, is not mentioned.

Merely trying to establish "guilt by association" doesn't do the job. We must demand a

demonstrated, logical connection between some religious belief and some atrocity.

Beyond that, to say that the ideologies "bred" dictators is to ignore the simple fact that the

odds are overwhelming, given the religious nature of man, that wherever a dictator came

from, he was bound to have had some religious upbringing of some sort; and that only 4

supposed Jews out of literally billions in history can be named, and only 3 supposedRoman Catholics out of billions, far from suggests that these religions are "breeding

grounds" for dictators...there have not been enough dictators in history to create a trulyscientific sample.

We refer the readerhere for relevant material on martyrdoms and their relevance.

An editor of Eusebius'History of the Church is quoted as saying that until 250 AD, "there

had been no persecution of Christians ordered by the Emperor on an imperial scale" --

which is true, but there were persecutions ordered on asub-imperialscale, as historyshows.)

On multiple views of Jesus (Ch. 2): First, it is clear that many of these "views" are simply

cases of scholars who needed something new to say emphasizing one aspect of a complex
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person over all other aspects. The real Jesus, I daresay, would qualify as a rabbi, a

marginal Jew, and a number of other things that are hardly incompatible with one

another.

Some of these biographies have true insights; others are of little worth. All these prove is

that authors need to say something new or radical to get published. All the rest proves isthat everyone wants the authority of Jesus on their side.

To simply list these views uncritically--to place Meier's magesterial, highly technical,detailed, and scholarly Marginal Jew side-by-side with Schaberg's speculation piece

proposing that Jesus was the product of a rape is off base.

I recommend Glenn Miller's essay onpseudox as a reply to charges of forgery in thechurch, and matters on authorship and dates of the gospels we have answeredelsewhere.

Likewise on the subject of the canon.

Luke is dated to 170 AD based first, on a quote borrowed uncritically from an author of

no known qualification named Waite who claims that Jerome "admits" that Luke was

written after the Gospel of Basilides, which was written in 125 AD. No actual quote fromJerome is offered, so I'll just put this down as false and ask that the author produce an

actual quote.

Luke is also dated late based on a quote from Lloyd M. Graham (!) stating that theCatholic Encyclopedia identifies Luke's Theophilus as the bishop of Antioch from 169-

177 AD.

This is an argument that I doubt can actually be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia: it is

unlikely that Luke would address a bishop as one who needs to "know the certainty of

those things, wherein thou hast been instructed," and Theophilus (meaning "one who

loves God") was a relatively common name.

Marcion's version of Luke is regarded as more original than our Luke (which is dismissedas "a compilation of dozens of older manuscripts," [37] an assertion without the least bit

of textual-critical support), and examples are given of supposed interpolations:

Luke's genealogy (something Marcion, wishing to disconnect Jesus from the God ofJudaism, would be likely to remove--Lk. 3:38)

Jesus' childhood and most of Luke 3 (which we are told, again without any textual orlinguistic evidence, was "interpolated into Luke to give Jesus a historical

background and Jewish heritage")

Luke 9:22 ("Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the

elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day."),

which Marcion offered without the bit about the priests and the scribes, again

dismissed without a shred of evidence as a historicizing interpolation.

Mark is dated to 175 AD based on the assumption that Mark is the same person as

Marcion. Here's the reasoning: "...legend held that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome
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and brought it to Alexandria, where he established churches, while Marcion

purportedly published his gospel in Rome and no doubt went to Alexandria at

some point." (38)

I think such "reasoning" speaks for itself and needs no refutation: This is

conspiracy-mongering, not scholarship.

Regarding Mark 1:16 ("Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon

and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers."), Wellsis quoted as saying that "Almost all commentators agree that the words 'by the sea

of Galilee' were added by Mark. They are placed quite ungrammatically in the

Greek syntax..." From this Wells concludes that a place name was inserted.

I have seen no such claim in any commentary on Mark. Beyond that, how does

this prove inauthenticity? It may prove that Mark had bad grammatical skills, and

that is something that commentaries I have read have noted.

Also, since these men were fishing, and thereafter went into Capernaum, which

was right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (1:21), and since Jesus had been saidto come into Galilee just before (1:14), just where does Wells think all of this

might have occurred?

John is dated to 178 AD, based on all the standard charges of anti-Semitism andunknown place names we have covered elsewhere, but apparently the author has

never heard of the John Rylands papyrus...a piece of John dated to 125 AD.

Matthew is dated to 180, based only on a quote from an authority that says so.

The author uses the standard commentary about there being over 150,000 variant

readings in the textual history of the NT, a point we have covered elsewhere; theconflicting genealogies and Lukan census issues; differences in reportage in the

gospels; an author of unknown credentials named Dujardin is quoted as noting "atotal lack of historical verity" in that Jesus preached in Galilee during the time

when Tiberias was being built, and since the city would not have been finished

yet, the preaching would then be set "in a countryside overturned by demolition

and rebuilding" (! - Really? the WHOLE of Galilee was a mess and was coveredin construction workers?)

Acts is dated to 177 AD, and it is said sarcastically that "the first 'Christians' arefound at Antioch, even though there was no canonical gospel there until after 200

CE." (46)

I do not know when Acharya went from house to house in Antioch every day

between 33 AD and 200 AD and proved that there was no canonical gospel there.

Not that it would be needed in an age when oral transmission was far more

important...assuming one could actually prove such an assertion in the first place.

A couple of outdated sources are also quoted as saying that Acts is unreliable;

scholarship since the 18th century has proven otherwise.


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Josephus' cites are dismissed as mere forgeries (including the one with John the

Baptist) merely because "scholars and Christian apologists alike" have regarded

them as such, though we are given no names of such scholars, only two otherChrist-mythers, two 19th-century writers, and a writer from the 18th century--

much less are any critical evaluations of arguments offered.

Pliny is dismissed with the 19th-century claim that Pliny's letters are forgeries, a

position held by no reputable scholar of Greco-Roman history today. We are also

told that conspirators may have changed Pliny's reference, which may haveoriginally been to the Essenes...although what that rural, antagonistically-Jewish

Dead Sea community was doing with members in the middle of an urban, Gentile

nation several hundred miles from home, we are not told.

Tacitus is also dismissed as a forgery, based on the work of yet another scholar of

the 19th century whose work has long been dismissed by Tacitean and Greco-

Roman scholars.

Also thrown in the mix is a quote we've seen before from Pope Leo X. The authortries to certify Leo as a specialist, saying that he was "privy to the truth because ofhis high rank," (58) but I believe we know by know that this conspiracy-

mongering speculation of a vast secret being kept quiet for 1500+ years but

nevertheless revealed publicly by a supposed key leader doesn't deserve a

moment's credence. (For more on this, checkhere.)

The author's next section is on the Gnostics, and while she is right to say that the

ideas that were part of Gnosticism are indeed old, older indeed quite often thanNT Christianity, she takes the overtaxed position that "Gnosticism was proto-

Christianity." (60) The evidence for this?

That critics of Christianity like Porphyry and Plotinus attacked Gnosticswhom they considered to be Christians--which means about as much as

the modern media attacking the groups of Jim Jones and David Koresh as"Christian." The inadequate knowledge of others, and their inability to

offer precise classifications of religious groups they hate intensely, offers

no proof of anything.

That three church Fathers were either sympathetic to Gnostic views(Clement of Alexandria, and Ireneaus, so we are told, who "had a zodiac

on the floor of his church at Lyons" [60]) or once were (Augustine)--which also means absolutely nothing; that a small number of church

Fathers some 200 years after the fact and in an entirely different social-cultural milieu had any sort of involvement in a contrary movement nomore adds proof to the thesis that "Gnosticism was proto-Christianity"

than pointing to a group of modern Christian youth who playDungeonsand Dragons proves that "fantasy gaming is proto-Christianity."
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It is claimed that Christianity shares Gnosticism's "disdain for the flesh and for

matter in general," (60) although the cites offered prove no such thing, especially

when examined in their literary-historical context.

John 7:7 ("The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify ofit, that the works thereof are evil.") is cited as proof of Jesus' supposedGnosticism, but this only says that the works of the world are evil, not

matter or the world itself.

based on hissupposed "abhorrence of the flesh" (though no cite is given showing this;

actually, Paul, like all Jews, believed that the flesh was weak and in need

of a better replacement, the physical and material resurrection body--1Cor. 15, 2 Cor. 5)

2 Cor. 4:4 ("In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of themwhich believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the

image of God, should shine unto them."), where Paul is said to "speakgnostically" about the "god of this world" being evil, although how this isspecially "Gnostic" is far from clear.

We are also told that Paul "reveals" here that "the scriptures weretampered with," when he indicates that others have been "handling the

word of God deceitfully"; even if applicable, this could hardly prove that

any such tampering survived the textual-copying process and was no more

than an aberration; beyond that, there is nothing specifically associatedwith the Greek here that indicates textual tampering [as opposed to, say,

oral preaching].

Gal. 3:27 ("For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have puton Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,

there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.") is saidto prove that "the Christ in this human phase could be female as well as

male" and was therefore an androgynous concept; how this is so is not

explained at all, especially since the passage is applied to believers andtheircurrent state in Christ...and we have little evidence that conversion to

Christianity caused immediate androgynization.

There is a repeat of the "Trypho error" we have dealt with elsewhere.

Appeal is made to Higgins, who claims that a medal of "the Savior," with adepiction of a bearded man with long hair and a Hebrew inscription, was found in

pre-Christian ruins. I'd say don't believe it: such a find would have madeBiblicalArchaeological Review; that it is found cited in a book written in the early 1800s,

before scientific archaeological dating was possible, tells us enough about howlikely it is that Higgins was actually on to something

By the way, Higgins also wrote a book claiming that the Celtic druids were
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emigrants from India.

It is said that Serapis, a god of the Egyptian state religion from the 3rd century BConward, was depicted as "a white man with long, dark hair and a beard" (which

describes a rather significant portion of the Ancient Near Eastern male population

during the period in question as well); a complaint about the lack of coinsdepicting Jesus (why would a religion founded from Judaism and with a distaste

for graven images put Jesus' portrait on a coin?)

A repeat of Earl Doherty's "why no sacred sites" argument, which we answered

here

Seehere on Elohim as a plural; the proclamation that "the various biblical namesfor 'God' " [89] (like Elohim, Adonai, etc.) are evidence of polytheism is without

information on the ancient Near Eastern practice of multiple naming of

individuals and even pagan deities, and also needs a reminder that multiple titles

like "God Above" and "God Most High" are hardly evidence of numerous

personages, unless our "President" and "Commander in Chief" titles today areevidence of such.

Support of the JEDP theory may be countermanded by essays found by myself

and Glenn Millerhereand here.)

Offered is Potter's assertion that "El Shaddai" was a being "later demonized in

Psalms 106:37, condemned as one of the 'devils'--the Canaanite Shedim, to whom

the Israelites sacrificed their sons and daughters." [92]

The word in Psalms 106:37 comes from a root meaning to devastate or waste;

Shaddai, however, comes from a slightly different root that implies power,

including that to devastate. The words are related, as is appropriate since that areboth used of supernatural and powerful beings, but it means no more than that the

word "energy" might be applied both to natural gas and also to bicycle pedalpower.

We are also told: "Baal is in reality the earlier name of the character later known

as Yahweh, as is stated in Hosea 2:16" [93]:

And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call meIshi; and shalt call me no more Baali.

Biblical scholars, however, do not regard this verse as evidence that Yahweh was

once Baal; rather, they take the recognized fact that "Baal" also means "husband"(as even the author knows), and within the poetic context of Hosea as depicting

Israel's relationship to God as a marriage, know that "Baal" as presented in this

verse (actually, "ba'aliy" rather than "ba'al," as the name of the pagan god) is a

sterner form of "husband" with more of a service connotation of a master or anowner, versus the earlier word translated "husband," 'iysh, which has a plainer

connotation of a man without any implication of servanthood.
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It is quite clear in the context of Hosea as a whole that the point is a change of

relationship with Israel in the eschatological future..and it has nothing to do with

any change of identity in the true God. Merely having Blavatsky (an occultist, nota scholar) claim that the "Ba'al" of the Israelites was the same as the sun does not

do the job.

Keep in mind that to call any divine being, even the true God, a "ba'al" means no

more than calling people of varying rank "sir." The term is often used as a mere

proper name for a pagan deity without realization that it had a generalized use,much like "Lord" did in NT times.

Fanciful word games, not presented evidence, stand behind such claims as that

"Jehovah" is the same as a Chinese deity named Yao or Iao and the Egyptian Huhiand the Latin Jove; also "Israel" is said to be a combination of "three different

reigning deities," Isis, Ra, and El (with no proving of an etymolgical connection

or using anything but an English coincidence of letters; never mind also theknown Hebrew roots, as encapsulated in Gen. 32:28 and accepted by Hebrew

linguists).

There's also an allusion to the idea that Mt. Sinai was a volcano, and Yahweh a

volcano god (where this volcano is, isn't specified; the mountains of the Sinai

region and in Palestine are not geologically active); there's even a good story

worth quoting in detail:

As Jordan Maxwell points out, the benediction or blessing sign of

the Feast (of the giving of the law) is the same as the split-

fingered, "live long and prosper" salutation of the Vulcan

character Spock on "Star Trek." Vulcan, of course, is the sameword as volcano, and the Roman god Vulcan was also a lightning

and volcano god.

News from an old Trekkie: Leonard Nimoy grew up in a Jewish home, and hewas using the split-finger symbol long before Roddenberry conceived of the guy

with the pointed ears.

The story of Hezekiah finding the book of the Law as "obviously fictitious"[101]...why? Because:

"...(I)t cannot be explained why, if Moses had been real and had such adramatic and impactful life, his Law would have been "lost" in the first

place." [101]

What? Didn't we just get through acknowledging how the people went

whoring after other gods? Isn't that reason enough for the Law of Moses to

have been lost? And how does Moses' "dramatic and impactful life" have

any effect on those living tens or hundreds of years later?

Finally, given that the overwhelming majority of all ancient literature is

lost -- even that written by people who had "dramatic and impactful" lives


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-- how is this a worthwhile argument in the first place?

If it had been lost, we are asked, "how did Hezekiah know to follow it whenhe made his purges and reforms?"

You don't need explicit instructions to tell you to get rid of idols, priests,

and altars to false gods when you are trying to please the true god(s); that'sjust the standard religio-historical paradigm in action.

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes

Jesus Christ waspublicly portrayedas crucified?

The author tells us that since the Galatians were presumably not in Jerusalem for

the crucifixion, the only way Jesus could have been "publicly portrayed" ascrucified before their eyes would be if it happened locally -- and she thinks this

"suggests the recurring passion of the cult of Attis."

I don't know what version is quoted here, but the Greek behind "publicly

portrayed" is the wordprographo, meaning, "to write previously, announce,

prescribe, evidently set forth." The word does not indicate the enacting of an

event but the proclamation of one.

Here are samples of "wildcard" analogies that are part of an attempt to read the

Bible "astrologically". Sometimes it seems to make sense (i.e., when Reuben iscalled "unstable as water" [Gen. 49:4], this is said to correspond to Aquarius; but

there is far more to Reuben's description that doesn't fit, and one could associate

"water" with other astrological signs as well, like Cancer the Crab); other times,

and more often, it seems to be a long stretch (i.e., Joseph is identified asSagittarius because he was "fiercely attacked by archers" -- isn't Saggy the archer?

-- and Naphtali as a "hind let loose" is said to correspond to Capricorn the goat;never mind that hinds are female deer, not goats).

With these and other comments (i.e., John 14:2, Jesus' reference to God's house

having "many mansions," this refers to the "houses of the moon" or the zodiacalconstellations!), we need say little at all.

On the thesis that "the Son of God is the Sun of God," and has the pretense thatthe story of Christ is paralleled by sun mythology, some of the parallels drawn are

badly misinformed; thus:

"The sun 'dies' for three days at the winter solstice, to be born again or resurrected

on December 25th." Is this meant to parallel something? If so, somebody is

missing the target: Aside from the fact that 12/25 was a later choice of the church

based on pagan thought rather than on Biblical data, the story is that Christ wasborn 12/25 -- not born again or resurrected.

"The sun at its zenith, or 12 noon, is in the house or heavenly temple of the 'Most


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High'; thus, 'he' begins 'his Father's work' at 'age' 12."

First of all, the Hebrews reckoned what we call noon as the "sixth hour" of theday.

Second, the sun hardly "begins" it's work at noon; it begins it's work at dawn.

Third, related to that, noon isn't even "age" 12 for the sun; at that point the sun is

around five to six hours "old," depending on the time of year. Perhaps it is morelikely that this story of Jesus alluded to has something to do with the fact that at

12, Jewish boys were considered to be taking steps into manhood and

independence.

"The sun enters into each sign of the zodiac at 30 [degrees]; hence, the 'Sun of

God' begins his ministry at 'age' 30."

Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was about30, not actually 30.

"The sun is the 'Lion' when in Leo, the hottest time of the year, called the 'throneof the Lord.' "

What? The hottest time of the year is called the "throne of the Lord"? By whom?

Or is it Leo that is called that, and again, by whom?

"The sun is 'betrayed' by the constellation of the Scorpion, the backbiter, the time

of the year when the solar hero loses his strength."

It fits well to put that "betrayed" in quotes. Using that word to describe what

happens is a crime against language.

"The sun is hung on a cross, which represents its passing through the equinoxes,the vernal equinox being Easter."

For this analogy to work, wouldn't the sun at least have to go east to west part of

the year, and north and south some other part of the year? Where does a cross fit

in, other than in the imagination?

"The sun does a 'stutter-step' at the winter solstice, unsure whether to return to life

or 'resurrect,' doubted by this 'twin' Thomas."

How did Jesus do a "stutter-step" at the winter solstice? How was he "unsure"

whether to resurrect? Thomas wasn't his twin, and he didn't doubt until afterthe

resurrection.

Other parallels drawn are also stretches of the imagination, thus:

"The sun of god is 'born of a virgin,' which refers to both the new or 'virgin'

moon and the constellation of Virgo." hm. How is the sun "born" of the

moon or of this specific constellation? Simply attempting to draw an illicitsynonym (new = virgin?!?) and citing an astronomical arrangement

without connection will not do the job.


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"The sun is the 'Carpenter' who builds his daily 'houses' or 12 two-hour

divisions." The sun does no such thing: The "houses" remain there at all

times, and it is an incredible stretch to draw the conception of carpentry inhere. Nothing is being "built" except the foundation for a fertile

imagination.

"The sun's 'followers' or 'disciples' are the 12 signs of the zodiac, through

which the sun must pass." Say again? How did Jesus "pass" through his

disciples? How do the zodiac signs "follow" the sun? They don't.

"The sun is 'anointed' when its rays dip into the sea." And:

"The sun 'changes water into wine' by creating rain, ripening the grape onthe vine and fermenting the grape juice." ! So where do all the little

microbes that cause fermentation find their analogy in the miracle at

Cana? Maybe someone wants to compare this to typological exegesis; ifthey do, they might bear in mind the warning we made when answering A.

J. Mattill: One can indeed run wild with typology, but as with analogiesthat one can likewise run wild with in daily life, so it is that sometype/antitype equations make more sense than others.

"When the sun is annually and monthly re-born, he brings life to the 'solar

mummy,' his previous self, raising it from the dead." How is the sun"monthly re-born"?

"The sun is 'crucified' between the two thieves of Sagittarius and Capricorn."Maybe I'm ignorant of such vital sciences as astrology when I ask this, but

aside from more illicit synonyminzing (the sun is "crucified"? who nails it

down and how?), since when are Sagittarius and Capricorn referred to as

thieves? How does a goat steal anything? Since when are archers everthieves by profession? (The bow and arrow is not exactly a well-known

robbery weapon.)

The sun is the 'Light of the World,' and 'comes on clouds, and every eye shall

see him.' " Light is a good metaphor for inspiration and truth, so it is used

in contexts ranging from the religious (as here) to the ridiculous (as whena lightbulb appears over Dagwood Bumstead's head when he gets an idea

for a new kind of sandwich). As for riding on clouds, the sun does no such

thing; it "rides" behind the clouds; Jesus' statement is better informed bythe Jewish theme of holy beings riding on clouds.

"The sun is the Word or Logos of God." This requires only oneresponse: ???????

To relate the life of Jesus to the signs of the zodiac, the same pattern of mixing

synonym-stretching with bad data and analogies, as these samples show [161]:

"According to legend, Jesus was born in a stable between a horse and a goat,

symbols of Sagittarius and Capricorn." Is this from the Bible (it's not) or a


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later church creation that might have indeed been influenced by

astrological syncretism? Either way, it doesn't matter: Horses in this

period could only be afforded by royalty, governments, and the very rich,and they wouldn't be kept in a stable with a goat. Also, wasn't the archer

the symbol for Sagittarius before? If we can keep switching symbols

around like this, we can make anything mean anything we want.

"He was baptized in Aquarius, the Water-Bearer." So were the thousands of

Jewish proselyte baptisms also done "in Aquarius"? This is merely anattempt to create an astrological allegory upon a historical reality.

"(Jesus) became the Good Shepherd and the Lamb in Aries, the Ram." A ram

or lamb is not a shepherd. Stretching the symbolism to accommodate ourthesis is not going to work.

"Jesus told the parables of the sowing and tilling of the fields in Taurus, theBull." Jesus also told parables of other things; what sign are they told in?

This is simply stretching another historical reality (the use of agriculturalmetaphors, natural in an agrarian society like rural Palestine) for the sakeof a thesis.

"In Cancer, 'the celestial Sea of Galilee,' he calmed the storm and waters,

spoke of backsliders (the Crab), and rode the ass and foal in triumph intothe City of Peace, Jerusalem." Four questions: 1) This "celestial Sea of

Galilee" quote comes from Hazelrigg, and not a scrap of evidence is given

that this phrase was any sort of accepted name for Cancer or has anyrelevance to the matter at hand. Let's hear it directly from an archaeologist

working in the field, a sociologist, or even a historian of religion. 2) How

did Cancer the Crab calm storms and waters? Crabs don't have muchpower to do that. 3) They are also "sidesliders," not backsliders, and what

Scripture is this alluding to? 4) What do crabs have to do with riding

donkeys into the City of Peace?

"In Libra, Christ was the true vine in the Garden of Gethsemane, the 'wine

press,' as this is the time of the grape harvest." That has nothing to do with

the sign of Libra, which is scales. A stretch, which would not have beentoo hard anyway: The astrological signs (the constellations, that is) were

designed based upon common objects available in the ancient period in

which they were designed. If there had been an astrological sign calledTiller shaped like a plow, the author could have said that Jesus "picked

grains of wheat in Tiller." If there had been a sign shaped like a king'scrown, thr author could say that Jesus had been made King of Kings inthat sign.

"Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the 'backbiter,' or Scorpio." So scorpions go

biting people on the back?

"In Sagittarius, Jesus was wounded in the side by the Centaur, or centurion."


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There's one big problem with that, and that's that the Greek word for

"centurion" is hekatontarches, which doesn't look or sound like the

English "centurion" or "centaur."

"He was crucified at the winter solstice between the 'two thieves' of

Sagittarius and Capricorn, who sapped his strength." Aside from the same"thieves" question above, we may point out that Easter is notat the winter

solstice (Dec. 22nd), and the thieves on the cross in no sense "sapped"

Jesus' strength.

Wells is quoted as saying that "Nothing is known of such a place" as the Garden

of Gethsemane [162]. If this means, "We have no other record of it in other

sources," that is probably true, but tell me where else you might expect someone'sprivate garden to be mentioned in a major work of history, unless some event of

concern to them personally happened there.

It is also said, "...Jesus is the Piscean fish god, who, at Luke 24:11-2, upon his

resurrection is made to ask, 'Do you have any fish?' " [164] Actually, that's Luke24:41, and the request was forbrosimos, or meat, which was a synecdoche foranything that was edible, and contrary to Achy, this did not "establish the choice

of communion food of the new age." There is no evidence of fish being used in

early Christian communal meals, and the Catholic custom of eating fish on

Fridays is a much later, and very much irrelevant, matter of concern.

Barbara Walker, who is not a scholar or serious researcher, is quoted as saying

that "Antichrist was the Christian equivalent of the Chaldean Aciel, lord of thenether world, counterbalancing the solar god of heaven." And added: "In other

words, it was the night sky." [216]

Naturally, not a shred of etymological, linguistic, archaeological, literary, orhistorical evidence is given for these wild assertions.

The author makes much of saying that the "descent into hell by the savior is a

common occurrence within many mythologies," and provides a list [222], but did

not check to see if Christ really did that.

It is claimed that "a number of Jesus' parables were derived from Buddhism and

the very ancient sect of Jainism," [227] but no literary, historical, textual, etc.

evidence for this is provided.

It is said that the Logos or Word concept is found "in mythologies from the

Mediterranean to China," but the only example given is of "a Word of God,written in starry characters, by the planetary Divinities..." [228] This is like saying

Western Union stole the word "message" from ancient medieval scribes.

We are told that the church steeple is a sexual symbol, as is the church nave [285].

Allegro's "sacred mushroom" thesis, an idea so irresponsible that a cartel of

scholars of all persuasions took out an ad in a major publication calling it a
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fantasy, is described as "not implausible." [294]

Rounding off the author's reworking of first-century Judaism: a claim that thePharisees were "luni-stellar cult people" while the Saducees were "mainly solar

cultists." [312]

Christianity as we know it, we are told, was the creation of theJewish/Alexandrian Therapeuts, who "had at their disposal the university and

library at Alexandria..." [330] Interesting to hear that Christian faith began assomeone's term paper.

Next time you see a Masonic Lodge member, ask him about this one: "The

Mithraists were also Masons, and the Kabbalists and Chaldeans were MasterMasons...the fortress at Qumran was a Masonic enclave, since masons built it,

particularly its large tower, a strong Masonic symbol." [344] I guess non-Masons

only build squatty buildings like public restrooms? What we end up being told, atany rate, is that everyone and his brother was a Mason and was in on this

conspiracy. In fact: "Unbeknownst to the masses, the pope is the Grand Master-Mason of the Masonic branches of the world." [348]

We are told that the story of Apollonius of Tyana was a source for the NT -- to

which we say, this.

These are just a few problems with The Christ Conspiracy. Is this a trustworthy

source? Not in any sense.

-JPH

It's a most basic set of questions to ask: Who wrote the Gospels?

When were they written? And generally, is there any reason to suspectthat they are full of fabrications?

The usual Skeptical/critical view asserts in answer:

The Gospels are anonymous documents; we cannot know who

wrote then.

The Gospels are all late documents, written between 70-100 AD,

or some say even in the 2nd century AD.

The Gospels are the product, in various places, of their authors'

imaginations.

We shall find in our investigation to follow that these assertions are

unwarranted, and are counter to the evidence available. We assert inturn that:

There are excellent reasons for maintaining the traditionalascriptions of Gospel authorship, when standard tests for such
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determinations are applied;

There is no reason to date ANY of the Gospels later than 70 AD,

although such dating may be permissible in the case of John;

There is no reason to suppose that the Gospel authors took

creative liberties with the events they recorded, to the point offabrication.

We will examine and dispose of the common arguments for dating theGospels late, and for rejecting their traditional authorship. With this, I

will also offer two caveats:

Authorship and date are important; but equally important, if

not more so, is whether what is in the Gospels is true.

Regardless of who wrote the Gospels and when, if they reflect

reality correctly, then it points to their being written byeyewitnesses, or having eyewitnesses as their source. Thus,

even if the traditional authorship and earliest dates aredisproved - and it is my contention that the arguments against

them are inadequate - it matters very little, we may surmise,

who wrote them and when. (Hengel [Heng.4G, 6] notes that wehave only one biography of Muhammed, written 212 years after

his death, which used a source from about 100 years after hisdeath, and yet "the historical scepticism of critical European

scholarship is substantially less" where Muhammed is

concerned.)

Critical arguments about authorship and date of the Gospelsrevolve around the same data, and have revolved around

it, for a long time.

With very, VERY few exceptions, critics and Skeptics have used

the same arguments against the traditional data over and overand over. In my survey of the literature, I have found that the

standard critical arguments have been overused by Skeptics and

sufficiently answered by traditionalists; yet the critics have notdeigned to answer the counter-arguments, except rarely and

then only with bald dismissals.

Also of relevance, Glenn Miller has contributed two excellent responses

to James Still here and here.

Gospel Authors: General Considerations
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The "anonymity" of the Gospels authors is something that manySkeptics claim. Yet I have noted that in making this argument, critics

neverexplain to us how their arguments would work if applied equallyto secularancient documents whose authenticity and authorship is

never (or is no longer) questioned, but are every bit as "anonymous"

in the same sense that the Gospels are.

If it is objected that the Gospel authors nowhere name themselves intheir texts -- and this is a verycommon point to be made, even among

traditionalists -- then this applies equally to numerous other ancient

documents, such as Tacitus'Annals. Authorial attributions are foundnot in the text proper, but in titles, just like the Gospels.

Critics may claim that these were added later to the Gospels, but theyneed to provide textual evidence of this (i.e., an obvious copy of

Matthew with no title attribution to Matthew, and dated earlier or early

enough to suggest that it was not simply a late, accidentalommission), and at any rate, why is it not supposed that the titleswere added later to the secular works as well?

In order for readers to appreciate the magnitude of this situation, Iwould like to present here a listing of external evidences for the

authorship of the works of Tacitus. I wish to thank Roger Pearse for

helpfully sending me copies of relevant pages from the works of theTacitean scholar Mendell, from Tacitus: The Man and His Work.

Mendell surveys evidence for knowledge of Tacitus throughout history;we will only look at evidence up to the sixth century (for reasons noted

in Mendell below).

In doing this we would challenge potential respondents to compare

this record to that of the Gospels. We will present Mendell's commentsand intersperse our own.

THE Annals were probably "published" in 116, the last of the works ofTacitus to appear. Only Pliny of Tacitus' contemporaries mentions him,

and his writings and the evidence of subsequent use up to the time ofBoccaccio is slight. It is not true, however, that Tacitus and his

writings were practically unknown. They were neglected----possibly, in

part at least, because of his strong republican bias on the one handand because, on the other, the church fathers felt him to be unfair to

Christianity. Vopiscus in his life of the emperor Tacitus (chapter 10)indicates the state of affairs in the third century: "Cornelium Tacitum,

scriptorem historiae Augustae, quod parentem suum eundem diceret,

in omnibus bibliothecis conlocari iussit neve lectorum incuria deperiret,librum per an-nos singulos decies scribi publicitus evicos archiis iussit
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et in bibliothecis poni" (the text is obviously corrupt in the readingevicos archiis).

Nevertheless, Tacitus is mentioned or quoted in each century down toand including the sixth. In fact, the seventh and eighth are the only

centuries that have as yet furnished no evidence of knowing him. Thefollowing are the known references to Tacitus or use of Tacitean

material after the day of Tacitus and Pliny until the time of Boccaccio.The material was well collected in 1888 and published at Wetzler by

Emmerich Cornelius, but a considerable amount of new material has

turned up from time to time since.

About the middle of the second century Ptolemy published his

Gewgrafikh& 'Ufh&ghsij. In 2. 11. 12 (ed. C. Muller, Paris, 1883) helists in succession along the northern shore of Germany the towns of

Flhou&m, and Siatouta&nda. The latter name occurs nowhere else and

has a dubious sound. The explanation is to be found in Tacitus, Ann. 4.72, 73: "Rapti qui tributo aderant milites et patibulo adfixi; Olenniusinfensos fuga prae-venit, receptus castello, cui nomen Flevum; et

haud spernenda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani

praesidebat." The governor of lower Germany takes prompt action, theaccount of which winds up: "utrumque exercitum Rheno devectum

Frisiis intulit, soluto iam castelli obsidio et ad sua tutanda degressisrebellibus." The source of Ptolemy's mistake is obvious.

Note here that Ptolemy's obvious use of Tacitus is taken as a signal ofthe Annals existing. This is in stark contrast to how quotes in patristic

writers from the Gospels are excused asway as "floating, independenttradition" rather than evidence of the Gospels. Note as well thatPtolemy does not name Tacitus. We still do not have an attribution of

authorship to work with some 40-50 years after the writing.

It is hard to believe that Cassius Dio (who published shortly after A.D.

200) did not know at least the Agricola. In 38. 50 and 66. 20 hementions Gnaeus Julius Agricola as having proved Britain to be an

island and in the later instance tells the story of the fugitive Usipi. Ifwe make allowance for the method of Tacitus, which leaves his

account far from clear, and for the use of a different language by Dio,

there can be little if any doubt that Tacitus is the source for Dio. Weknow also of no other possible source today. The last part of the

section, dealing with Agricola's return and death, confirms theconclusion that Dio drew from Tacitus, and it sounds as though Tacitus

had left the impression he desired.

Notice we still do not have an attribution, and we are now 80 and


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more years past the publication of these works by Tacitus. We arealready at or past the number of years Papias was from the Gospels.

In the third century Tertullian cites Tacitus with a hostile tone. He hadspoken without respect of the Jews and had implied that the Christians

were an undesirable sect of the Jews. It is not a surprise, therefore, tohave Tertullian (early third century) refer to him as ille mendaciorum

loquacissimus. The Apologist is defending the Christians against thecharge that they worshiped an ass. The origin of this scandal he

ascribes to Tacitus, Hist. 5. 3, 9. Apologeticus 16...

This is the first direct attribution of something to Tacitus -- apparently

over 100 years later. Tertullian also cited Tacitus in two other places.

Lactantius, in the time of Diocletian, is at least once (Div. inst. 1. 18.

8) somewhat reminiscent of Tacitean style but that is as far as it is

safe to go in claiming him as a reader of Tacitus, in spite of somethingof a resemblance between Lactantius 1. 11, 12 and Germ. 40.

At about the same date, Eumenius of Autun, in his Panegyricus ad

Constantinum 9, quite clearly has Agric. 12 before him. He followsTacitus in the error of thinking that the nights are always short, and

he assigns as reasons the same that the Roman had...Not only the

actual quotation from Tacitus is of interest but the careful substitutionof synonyms.

Vopiscus, still in the fourth century, cites Tacitus with Livy, Sallust,and Trogus as the greatest of Roman historians...Ammianus

Marcellinus, about 400, published his history, which began whereTacitus left off, indicating a knowledge at least of what Tacitus had

written. At about the same time Sulpicius Severus of Aquitaine wrotehis Chronicorum libri and, in 2. 28. 2 and 2. 29. 2, used Tacitus, Ann.

15. 37 and 44 as his source. On the detailed matter of Nero's marriage

with Pythagoras and the punishment of the Christians the verbalresemblances make it impossible to think that he was drawing on any

other source....Jerome in his commentary on Zacchariah 14. 1, 2 (3,p. 914) cites Tacitus: "Cornelius quoque [i.e. as well as Josephus]

Tacitus, qui post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas

Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." He gives no proof of havingread Tacitus----he may not even have seen his works at all----but he

did know of a tradition in which the thirty books were numberedconsecutively. Claudian cannot be safely claimed as a reader of Tacitus

in spite of his suggestive references to Tiberius and Nero. 8, Fourth

Consulship of Honorius...Servius, on the other hand, at the end of thefourth century, while his reference is to a lost part of Tacitus, evidently


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had read the text. Hegesippus made a free Latin version of Josephus'Jewish War with independent additions, many of which seem to come

from Tacitus' Histories. An example is 4. 8: "denique neque piscesneque adsuetas aquis et laetas mergendi usu aves." Compare Hist.

5.6: "neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas aquis volucres

patitur." There is a certain studied attempt at variation of wordingwithout concealment of the source. Of the fifth-century writers, two,

Sidonius Apollinaris and Orosius, have left evidence of considerablefamiliarity with Tacitus as well as respect for him as a writer. In Ep. 4.

22. 2 Sidonius makes a pun on the name Tacitus. After comparing

himself and Leo to Pliny and Tacitus he says that should the latterreturn to life and see how eloquent Leo was in the field of narrative,

he would become wholly Tacitus. The name as he gives it is GaiusCornelius Tacitus. Again in Ep. 4. 14. 1 he quotes Gaius Tacitus as an

ancestor of his friend Polemius. He was, says Sidonius, a consular in

the time of the Ulpians: "Sub verbis cuiuspiam Germanici ducis inhistoria sua rettulit dicens : cum Vespasiano mihi vetus amicitia"

etc...The citations in Orosius are naturally quite different from thesecasual references and general estimates. Orosius is always after

material for argument, and it is the content rather than the style thatinterests him. He refers to Tacitus explicitly and at length. He

compares critically the statements of Cornelius Tacitus and Pompeius

Trogus and again of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. The quotationsand citations from Tacitus are all in the Adversus paganos and all from

the Histories. In 1. 5. 1 Orosius says: "Ante annos urbis conditaeMCLX confinem Arabiae regionem quae tune Pentapolis vocabatur

arsisse penitus igne caeleste inter alios etiam Cornelius Tacitus refert,qui sic ait: Haud procul inde campi . . . vim frugiferam perdidisse. Etcum hoc loco nihil de incensis propter peccata hominum civitatibus

quasi ignarus expresserit, paulo post velut oblitus consilii subicit etdicit: Ego sicut inclitas . . . cor-rumpi reor." The quotation is from Hist.

5.7 and, in spite of some interesting variants, it is reasonably exact.

The same is true of his quotation of Hist. 5. 3 in Adv. pag. 1. 10. 1...

Cassiodorus is a sixth-century writer who seems to have used Tacitusas source material. He does not, however, seem to know much about

his source, for he speaks of "a certain Cornelius"; but he draws on

Germania 45...Perhaps a hundred years or less after Cassiodorus,Jordanes wrote his De origine actibusque getarum which he took

largely from Cassiodorus' history of the Goths. That one or the otherof these two must have known Agric. 10 is shown by the following

passage in Jordanes (2. 12, 13): "Mari tardo circumfluam quod nec

remis facile impellentibus cedat, nec ventorum flatibus intumescat,credo quia remotae longius terrae causas motibus negant. Quippe illic


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latius quam usquam aequor extenditur . . . Noctem quoque clarioremin extrema eius parte menima quam Cornelius etiam annalium scriptor

enarrat. . . Labi vero per earn multa quam maxima relabique fluminagemmas margaritasque volventia." The textual confusion memma

quam is usually taken to come from minimamque but we should

expect brevemque. The very last item is probably from Mela. TheScholiast to Juvenal 2. 99 and 14. 102 refers to the Histories,

ascribing them in the one case to Cornelius, in the other to CorneliusTacitus. The first note is as follows: "Hunc incomparabilis vitae bello

civili Vitellius vicit apud Bebriacum campum. Horum bellum scripsit

Cornelius, scripsit et Pompeius Planta, qui sit Bebriacum vicum aCremona vicesimo lapide." The second is a twofold description of

Moses: (a) "sacerdos vel rex eius gentis"; (b) "aut ipsius quidemreligionis inventor, cuius Cornelius etiam Tacitus meminit" (cf. Hist. 5.

3).

Comparably speaking, this evidence is vanishingly small compared tothe incredible number of attestations and attributions by patristicwriters, some few earlier than (but many as late as) those listed for

Tacitus above. How can someone dealing with the evidence fairly claim

to be sure of Tacitus' authorship of his various works (where suchexternal evidence is concerned) and dismiss the Gospels, which have

far better external evidence?

I have checked a book titled Texts and Tranmission (Clarendon Press,

1993) which records similar data for other ancient works. Throughoutthe book classic works from around the time of the NT whose

authorship and date no one questions (though some have textualissues, just like the NT) are recorded as having the earliest copy

between 5th and 9th century, earliest attributions at the same period

(for example, Celsus' De medicina is attested no earlier than 990 AD,and then not again until 1300), and having so little textual support

that if they were treated as the NT is, all of antiquity would be reducedto a blank walls. If the Gospels are treated consistenly, there will be no

question at all about their provenance, but that is clearly the last thing

critics want to do.

Not that lack of a name on a text automatically equates withanonymous authorship anyway: In this era prior to publishing, and

just prior to the advent of the codex, the equivalent to a spine or dust

jacket was a tag on the outside of a scroll identifying the work inquestion -- since there would be no other concrete way to discern

what was inside a scroll and differentiate it from other scrolls (otherthan external appearance). Whenever and by whomever the Gospels

were written, it would not be left "unauthorized" or "unidentified" if for


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have existed when the authors wrote their work. We will also see thatsome objections argue that a certain individual would not write a

certain way.

Of course, if there are no word- or concept-anachronisms, and if the

work shows signs of having been written in a style that the namedauthor would write, then this is positive evidence for that person's

authorship. A number of NT commentators (even in the traditionalistcamp) tend to treat such evidence as less than definitive; I would ask,

if it is good enough for secular scholars to use as confirmation, why

not here also?

External corroborative evidence. If Tacitus is referred to by other

people, or if he is found in other records, and if others attribute a workto him, then this is clear testimony that he wrote the document in

question (see above). On the other hand, if some writer at some point

(the closer to the time of Tacitus, the "better") either denies thatTacitus wrote a given work attributed to him, or else attributes(without reference to Tacitus) the work to another, we may have

reason to suspect Tacitus' authorship.

At the same time, if the works of Tacitus are found referred to in other

documents, this may be taken as evidence for the date of Tacitus'

works, in accordance with the dates of the works quoted, again asnoted above. Absence of such quotes would not necessarilyprove a

later date, but it would add suspicions if other reasons to be suspiciouswere present.

In light of these considerations -- which offer nothing radical or new --we may now ask these general questions:

If the Gospels are anonymous, why is there no other

surviving tradition of another author for the Gospels?

Second-century testimony is unanimous in attributing the four

Gospels to the persons that now carry their name. This suggests

that they received their titles early; for if they had not, therewould have been a great deal of speculation as to who had

written them - "a variation of titles would have inevitably risen,"as had happened with the apocryphal gospels. [Thie.EvJ, 15];

see also [Heng.Mark, 82] It is rather harder to believe that theGospels circulated anonymously for 60 or more years and then

someone finally thought to put authors on them -- and managed

to get the whole church across the Roman Empire to agree.

Why then were such unlikely characters chosen as authors?


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Luke is mentioned a few times by name in the NT, a veryobscure personage. Mark was a rotten kid; he abandoned Paul

(Acts 15). Matthew was an apostle, but he was also a taxcollector - would you pick the IRS man, and an obscure apostle,

to author your Gospel? [Wilk.JUF, 28] Only John is a logical

choice for a pseudonymous author.

The strength of this point is demonstrated in that some will usethe rationale that obscure persons were deliberately chosen as

authors in order to fool us into thinking that this would mean

they were authentic.

How could the early Christian community honor the Gospels

as authoritative unless they knew who had written them?

Even granting such a late date as some critics surmise, it is

doubtful that the Gospels could have gotten anywhere unlessthey were certainly attributable to someone who was recognized

as knowing what they were writing about. On the other hand, Imust say that some critics assume a high degree of gullibility in

the first-century church.

To this end, Hengel [CarMoo.Int, 66] has argued that the

Gospels musthave received their titles immediately - not in thesecond century. For an anonymous author to have penned a

Gospel, and have it accepted as from the hand of one of theQuartet or any authoritative person, would have required them

to first produce the Gospel, then present it as the work ofanother; they would have to concoct some story as to how itcame peculiarly to be in their possession; get around the

problem of why a work by such a person disappeared or waspreviously unknown; then get the church at large, first in his

area and then throughoutthe Roman Empire (and would not the

claimed discovery of such a document cause a sensation, andcontroversy?), to accept this work as genuine.

Can any critic explain how these logistic difficulties were

overcome? I have noted that they do well in offering

generalities, but never get down to the specifics of how JoeGentile could have managed to pull off such a hoax on the

church as a whole. Is there any parallel to this in secular history,where an enormous group at large was bamboozled by (and

continued to be bamboozled by) not just one forgery, but four,

attributed in a couple of cases to members of an inner circle, inwidely separated places and times?


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I'll add that under the "Q/Marcan priority" hypothesis, how is itthey suppose that "Matthew" and "Luke" would choose to use an

anonymous document as a source? Mark could not be recognizedas authoritative untilit was known what source it came from;

yet if the critics are right, "Mark" was considered authoritative

enough to use not by just one, but by two others workingindependently of one another. (One way around this scenario is

to hypothesize Christian "prophets" through whom these worksmight have been received and recognized; for a response to this,

see below.)

At the beginning of the second century, there would have

been first-generation Christians alive who recalled theapostles and their teaching, and many more second-

generation Christians who would have had information

passed directly to them.

We have early witnesses to the authorship of some of theGospels. Papias wrote around 110-130, and he surely did not

design the authorship of Matthew and Mark on the spur of the

moment. That being so, how could anyone have dared toattribute the Gospels to anyone other than the genuine authors

with these first- and second-generation witnesses still alive?Believers in the 70s-90s, when critics suppose that the Gospels

were authored anonymously, would have known of no works of

Matthew and the others; believers after the 90s who descendedfrom this generation and lived into the lifetime of Papias would

have had no tradition of such documents.

With these general considerations, we now offer these mini-essays:

Matthew -- this is the version from our resource Trusting theNew Testament, featured above.

-- older web version

Luke -- please see Trusting the New Testament-- older web

version

Gospel Freedoms

[Questions Against] [Non-Community Material] [Eyewitnesses and aFeedback Loop] [Burton Mack's Idea of Speech Production and
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Fabrication] [Material Irrelevance/Oral Tradition and Selection][Allegation of "Prophets" Creating Words of Jesus]

Did the church create "gospel fictions"? Are parts or the whole of theNT products of the Church's faith rather than recorded historical

events?

This is an issue that we touch upon in several places, but generally

speaking, we may ask in reply:

Why would the church have created such a difficult faith tofollow?

Certainly they could have made things much easier onthemselves by, for example, permitting sacrifices to the Emperor

of Rome as the Jews did - or perhaps making the difficult

passages easier to understand.

Why are there no passages relevant to later church issueslike circumcision? We will discuss this in more detail shortly.

Some of the material critics understand as late, simply isnot.

A favorite cite of critics, for example, is from Matthew 16:18 and18:17, where the word "church" is used. [Perr.NTI, 175] This is

meant to show that this selection from Matthew is post-Jesus.

But the word used here is ekklesia, and it was used to refer to"official meetings of the people of Israel" [Kiste.GCS, 83] - inother words, any worship assembly, including the synagogue.

Furthermore, a late date is also only assumed upon the circularassumption that Jesus wasn't trying to found a new movement --

something that is assumed rather than proved. Thus, these

verses cannot be used as evidence of lateness or cited as ad hoccreations.

Material in the Gospels does not reflect the creativity of a

"community." Davies [Davi.INP, 115] expresses it well:

The New Testament witnesses to virile, expanding

Christian communities, it is true, but also toconfused and immature ones. It is more likely that

the thrust, the creativity, the originality which lies

behind the Gospel tradition of the works and wordsof Jesus should be credited to him rather than to the

body of Christians. The kind of penetrating insight
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preserved in the Gospels points not to communities -mired and often muddled in their thinking - but to a

supreme source in a single person, Jesus...

Most importantly, eyewitnesses would not permit such

creation. This point is made by several authors. We begin with

John P. Meier:

One would think get the impression (from suchtheories) that throughout the first Christian

generation there were no eyewitnesses to act as a

check on fertile imaginations, no original-disciples-now-become-leaders who might exercise some

control over the developing tradition, and no striking

deeds and sayings of Jesus that stuck willy-nilly inpeople's memories. [Meie.MarJ, 169-70]

And Thomas and Gundry add [Thom.HG, 282-3]:

Form critics call into question the integrity of thedisciples. The disciples had seen and heard Jesus.

They had even been a part of his ministry. Yet, if theform critics are correct, they did not control the

accuracy of the tradition...Is it conceivable that in its

own discussions and disputes the early church wouldnot have examined doubtful statements concerning

Jesus' ministry? If the church, in fact, did notscrutinize such statements, why is there such close

agreement as to the nature and details of thatminsitry? A community that was purely imaginative

and lacking in discrimination would have found it

impossible to form a consistent tradition.

F. C. Grant said of the New Testament [Gran.GOG, 1-2]:

...its basic trustworthiness is beyond doubt; for it

rests, not upon one man's recollections - say Peter's- or those of two or three persons, but upon the

whole group of earliest disciples whose numbers are

reflected in the hundreds referred to by Paul and thethousands described in Acts. The early church did

not grow up in isolation, in some corner, but in thefull glare of publicity in the great cities of the Roman

Empire.


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And finally, Glenn Miller notes:

It should also be pointed out that even the earliest

church had 'controls' in place, that would naturally'keep the tradition in line'. There are several

indications that the early church had a surprisingamount of information exchange and 'feedback

loops'. Consider:

1.The early church had a center (Jerusalem) and

leaders (apostles)

2.When the church expanded into Samaria, there

was interaction with the leaders of the foundingchurch (Acts 8.14): "When the apostles in Jerusalem

heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,

they sent Peter and John to them". [By all accounts,Peter and John would have been closest to ANY

information about Jesus' acts/words.]

3.When the church expanded into Antioch, we seethe same pattern occur (Act 11:22): "News of this

reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and

they sent Barnabas to Antioch."

4.When the issue of circumcision came up, the

church in Antioch appointed Paul and Barnabas "togo up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about

this question" (Acts 15.2)

5.The first church council was held at Jerusalem (Act

15:23-29)

6.Paul accepted the importance of the Jerusalemcenter (Gal 2.1-2): "Fourteen years later I went up

again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took

Titus along also. I went in response to a revelationand set before them the gospel that I preach among

the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those whoseemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or

had run my race in vain."

7.At Jrs. Paul was welcomed and sent to the Gentiles

(Gal 2.9f): "James, Peter and John, those reputed tobe pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of

fellowship when they recognized the grace given to


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me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles,and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we

should continue to remember the poor, the verything I was eager to do."

8.Paul (a native of Tarsus!) returned to Jerusalemafter EACH missionary journey.

9.The leading apostles and evangelists had travelingministries, bringing them into contact with churches

and believers everywhere.

10.The early churches did NOT live in a vacuum.

They corresponded with each other (cf. I Clement, aletter from Rome to Corinth, a.d. 95, see ATNT:48-

49) and exchanged NT documents (cf. Col. 4.16).

The point should be clear--the early church had asignificant amount of information exchange, amongthe leadership, and therefore had major 'feedback

controls' which would have corrected significantaberrations early.

Vincent Taylor notes in the same light [Tayl.FGT, 41], in termsthat apply as much to the Jesus Seminar today as they did to

Bultmann in his time:

If the Form Critics are right, the disciples must have

been translated to heaven immediately after theResurrection. As Bultmann sees it, the primitive

community existed in vacuo, cut off from its

founders by the walls of an inexplicableignorance...Unable to turn to anyone for information,

it must invent situations for the words of Jesus, and,put onto his lips sayings which personal memory

cannot check. All this is absurd; but there is a

reason for this unwillingness to take into account theexistence of leaders and eyewitnesses...

By the very nature of his studies the Form Critic is

not predisposed in favor of eyewitnesses; he deals

with oral forms shaped by nameless individuals, andthe recognition of persons who could enrich the

tradition by their actual recollections comes as adisturbing element to the smooth working of the

theory. He is faced by an unknown quantity just


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where he has to operate with precise 'laws of thetradition.'

And Boyd adds:

One especially wonders how the survivingeyewitnesses to Jesus who were undoubtedly still

around, eyewitnesses who must have exercised

some influence within these communities, respondedto Mark's supposed rewriting of history. One must

ask how Mark could have thought that he could gethis piece of historical fiction past these

eyewitnesses. And, finally, how could this fabrication

not only be accepted, but serve to motivate thefollowers of Jesus to the point where they quickly

took this "new" Gospel and risked their lives

evangelizing the entire Mediterranean world?[Boyd.CSSG, 216]

Such a presupposition, as we have said before and elsewhere,

requires a "high threshold of gullibility" in the early Christiancircles.

Indeed, upon what basis is it said that the church simply created

things for Jesus to say? Mack [Mack.Q, 193-200], for one, appeals tothe Hellenistic practice of attributing "speech-in-character" to people

who did not necessarily say the things attributed to them, but "wouldhave" in the opinion of the attributers, because such things were

within the quoted person's character to say.

We may answer briefly by noting:

Mack (along with the Jesus Seminar) greatly

overemphasizes the influence of Hellenism on Jesus and

the Gospels.

Mack, who sees Jesus in the mode of a Greek cynic sage, must

hypotheize that Matthew and the other Gospel writers "actuallyburied Q in the fiction of Jesus as a Jewish sage." [ibid, 183] The

mistake here is ignoring the essential Jewishness of Jesus, Hismission, and His teachings. Much of critical NT scholarship is now

returning to this point of view. (For a brief, but thorough,refutation of the idea of Jesus as a Cynic sage, see [Boyd.CSSG,

153-62].)


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Mack's theory is implicated by his constant appeals to thecommunity imagination, and that of the early church.

Mack's book is full of phrases such as "one needs toimagine...one can easily imagine..." ([Mack.Q, 201-2], and

elsewhere), "a lengthy period of creative, intellectual labor,""explosion of intellectual energy," "an astonishing interpretation

of the Christ myth for Macedonians to have managed by the year50 CE," "astounding imagination," "an early achievement in

Christian mythmaking," "Matthew's gospel appeared in the late

80s and comes as a complete surprise," etc., etc. [Mack.WhoNT,80, 90, 109, 111, 154, 161] Everywhere in Mack's book, we are

surprised, shocked, confused, or bewildered by the developmentof early Christianity.

Mack's theory requires so much imagination because, quite

frankly, it has so little proof behind it. Mack's and similartheories require, as Blomberg puts it:

...the assumption that someone, about a generation

removed from the events in question, radicallytransformed the authentic information about Jesus

that was circulating at that time, superimposed a

body of material four times as large, fabricatedalmost entirely out of whole cloth, while the church

suffered sufficient collective amnesia to accept thetransformation as legitimate.

Blomberg further notes that there is no parallel in the history ofreligion to such a radical transformation of a famous teacher or

leader in such a short time, "and no identifiable stimulus amongthe followers of Jesus sufficient to create such a change."

[Wilk.JUF, 22] Indeed, though he wrote many years before

Mack, Kistemaker rightly describes Mack's methods: "In terms ofthe form-critical approach, the formation of the individual Gospel

units must be understood as a telescoped project withaccelerated course of action." [Kiste.GCS, 48]

And just as properly, Wright [Wrig.PG, 106] describes themethods of Mack and other critics of his persuasion:

A good deal of New Testament scholarship, in fact,

and within that a good deal of study of Jesus, has

proceeded on the assumption that the gospelscannot possibly make sense as they stand, so that

some alternative hypothesis must be proposed to


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written?

While we may suppose that the sayings of Jesus were applied in

settings that were different from the original - as would happenanyway, since no two situations are exactly alike! - we may NOT

presume that sayings were created out of the whole cloth -especially because:

The idea of "prophets" in the church has no historicalevidence.

This idea was proposed by Bultmann, who said that the churchdrew "no disctinction" between utterances by Christian prophets

(supposedly from the ascended Christ) and the earthly Jesus.

Bultmann took recognizance of statements that were indeed

attributed to the Risen Jesus (1 Thess. 4:15, Rev, 2-3) andmade much of it, though in neither case is a saying attributed toJesus when he was on earth. The Montanists in the 2nd century

especially were noted from producing sayinsg from Jesus in aprophectic ecstasy [Dunn.CS2, 145].

There can be no question that the church assumed itself capableof authoritative prophetic utterances. But did that authority

extend to assuming the ability to put words in Jesus' mouth

while on earth? Our answers [see also Dunn.CS2, 148ff]:

Most of the candidates for such utterances merelyassume what they must prove: That the earthly Jesuswas not a divine character or was not aware of his divinity

or mission (Matt 11:28-30; Luke 11:49-51 -- here Idisagree with Dunn, who does suppose that such words

were transferred over to Jesus on earth, albeit rarely).

There is no parallel for attributing the words of a

prophet to divinity: No OT books names Yahweh as its

author; in Judaism prophetic literature was passed downunder the name of the prophet.

The evidence is that the church continued this paradigm.Luke always names prophets who receive utterances (Acts

11:27, 13:1-2, 21:9-14); Revelation is said to be fromChrist, but to John (1:1). This implies that the churches

"were as suspicious of anonymous prophetic oracles astheir Jewish forebears..."


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There were "hostile" witnesses who could recognizesayings that didn't square with what Jesus would

say or ever said: If the church broke with Judaism on

this point, it is difficult to believe that this would not havebeen a point of contention that would have echoed down

the halls of accusation.

Celsus' Jew accuses the Christians of altering the Gospels

to harmonize them, but does not say that they inventedwords for Jesus based on prophetic oracles, and Diaspora

Jews who travelled to Palestine regularly for feasts andwould have heard, or heard about, Jesus' teachings were

everywhere to give reports or to make accusations.

Moreover, even within the church itself prophetic

utterances were tested as they were in Judaism, for truth

and accuracy, and false prophecies were warned against (1Thess. 5:19-22, 2 Thess. 2:2). Prophets were tested in a

variety of ways -- by their behavior (with the Didacheoffering several "tests" and guidelines for conduct, such as

living off the community for more than three days), and bytheir adherence to orthodoxy (see esp. 1 John 4:1-3).

This is specially relevant as popular Jewish opinion heldthat the prophetic spirit had ceased with Malachi. If there

was a claim that the spirit of prophecy was now doing

business again, it would have to pass some serious tests to

survive in Palestine and among the Diaspora.

The testimony of Paul (1 Cor. 7:10, 12) indicatesthat a difference was recognized between the words

of Jesus and his own: if Paul could just drop into acreative ecstasy, why would he not "dive in" and bring out

a word from the risen Jesus? [Boyd.CSSG, 122-4] He

regards his opinion as inspired, to be sure, but does notput it in the mouth of Jesus on earth. (The idea that 1 Cor.

7:10 refers to a "spiritual revelation" received directly byPaul has nothing to commend it and merely begs the

question against the natural form of the verbiage.)

On the other hand, Revelation is directly attributed to the

exalted Christ. If this was approved by the early church,why the need to switch it all over to the earthly Jesus?

Even the Gnostics preferred a "heavenly" attribution to an

earthly one.


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As Dunn asks, "whence came the sort of (unconscious)pressue which Bultmann must presuppose to incorporate

prophetic sayings into the Jesus-tradition?" And note thatnone of these sayings from Revelation appear as attributed

to the earthly Jesus in the Gospels.

Conclusion

The traditional view of the Gospels in terms of their authorship, date,and historicity, is supported by the weight of the evidence, and

rejected only by those whose own theological agenda forbids themfrom accepting it.

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